Interesting trends in concealed carry laws

States prohibiting concealed carry, with no licenses to do so available, shrank from 16 to 0.
States allowing permits on a discretionary "may issue" basis shrank from 25 to 9.
States allowing permits on a "shall issue" basis rose from 8 to 36.
States allowing concealed carry with no permit rose from 1 to 5.

All this over a period when both total homicides and gun homicides have fallen by about half.

Still looks like a lot of PATERNALISM at work. Government knows best. You are too stupid or too whatever to choose to act morally on your own and you really don't have a GOD-given Right to protect yourself.

Try reading John Randolph Tucker's 1899 work and attempt to grasp the intricacies of the relationship between government and the Body-politic, which actually holds the real authority. Paternalism gives us folks like Obama and Di Blasio and laws that grant the true authority holders permission to do what GOD granted the individual that authority to do.

More like 41 de jure shall issue states, per the handy table on Wikipedia which is accurate to the best of my knowledge. Rather amazingly, Connecticut is de facto shall issue, even after Sandy Hook, and Delaware is reported to be mostly so. You can add Vermont in some way, it simply never enacted restrictions on carry.

Amplifying on harp1034's comment, Hawaii is de jure no issue except for guards and the like, and de facto no issue period.

Per the table and my memory, to the list of de facto no issue states or areas you can add many urban counties in California (both it and Hawaii the subject of successful litigation right now), Maryland, unless you can demonstrate a real threat, and only for the duration of that (in many ways it's the "least worst" restrictive state), New Jersey of course, with ~9,000 licenses outstanding for guards and perhaps the politically connected, some counties and NYC in New York, and Rhode Island is a complicated mess.

Massachusettes is also complicated, there is no unincorporated land and it's done by city on the whim of the police chief, but lots of them are de facto shall issue. On the other hand, when mere possession of a long gun became may issue post Sandy Hook, the police chief of Boston was looking forward to banning all of them from the city, but I gather he allows some pistol permits and his statement was implicitly couched in terms that handguns were OK in a city.

FWIW, I can confirm that Delaware more-or-less operates as shall-issue. The reason "self-defense away from home" is accepted as a perfectly valid reason for wanting to obtain a permit. It is technically may-issue, and some of the requirements to obtain a permit are dumb, but ordinary folks can usually get permits if they go through the process.

It is interesting to see the progress made - and obviously a very good thing. Hopefully Kansas will be #6 for constitutional carry. West Virginia should have been, but their governor vetoed it ... and unfortunately there was no time left in the session to try for an override.